Why iOS 11 drains your battery faster on your existing iPhone
Despite tons of new fancy features iOS 11 has and bring over, people all over the world complaining about battery draining issues on their devices with iOS 11 mainly the iPhone.
While it certainly has its own share of bugs, there are also other things to put into considerations on why on iOS 11 your battery drains so fast.
7 things you can do and consider to reduce battery draining issues on iOS 11
If downgrading to iOS 10 is not an option, here are things you can do to reduce battery draining issues on iOS 11.
1. iOS 11 AirDrop by default is turned on
Do you know that AirDrop is turned on by default on iOS 11? Well, in case you don’t know, check it now and turn it off.
Here’s how to check and turn off AirDrop on iOS 11:
a. Go to Settings > General > AirDrop
b. Tap on Receiving Off
2. iOS 11 Bluetooth and Wifi are never really turned off
Do you also know that turning off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth via the new iOS 11 Control Center won’t actually turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth?
Well, in case you also don’t know, yes, it won’t turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth completely. What it does is simply disconnect you. I have seen it and experienced it since using the first iOS 11 Public Beta. And I fully believe this is really not a bug but rather Apple is using both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection for something else, such as to help locate you when you are using Apple map inside the building perhaps.
Here’s how to completely turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on iOS 11:
To turn off Wi-Fi completely
a. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi
b. Find Wi-Fi, slide it off.
To turn off Bluetooth completely
a. Go to Settings > Bluetooth
b. Find Bluetooth, slide it off.
3. iOS 11 Location services – Find which app keeps tracking you
Check your location service for any apps or system services that keep using or retrieving your location. Turn them completely off or switch them to “while using”. This will save you a lot of battery power.
Here’s how to check and switch location service on iOS 11:
a. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services
b. The easy way is to completely turn off location services, however I do not recommend that. Find apps and system services that keep using your location, if you feel that app/system services are not that important, change the location services access to “Never” or “While Using”.
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4. iOS 11 screen brightness – Check and reduce your screen brightness
Screen brightness is one of the biggest factor that draining iPhone battery. In fact not only iPhone, but all the phones. Try to reduce the screen brightness to somewhere your eyes still feel comfortable to see the screen. While it’s still good for your eyes, it’s helps the battery a lot.
5. Disable raise to wake on iOS 11
Since iPhone 6S and iOS 9, Apple introduced Raise to Wake where you don’t need to press a buttons at all on your iPhone to turn the screen on, you can just simply raise your iPhone and voila! The screen turned on. Such a nice feature. While this feature able to save your power button and/or home button from getting broken, it does have impact to your battery, especially if you put the iPhone in your pocket upright or put the iPhone inside couch or bag, the screen may accidentally turned on multiple times without you knowing. If you really need to use this feature, like what I do, my suggestion is to store your iPhone upside down on your pocket so the screen won’t accidentally turned on while it’s in your pocket. Alternatively to completely turned off this feature if you put it inside couch or bag.
6. Check which apps draining your battery. It could be the app may not be iOS 11 ready
Go to Settings > Battery. Check which app draining your battery a lot.
Turn off, sign out from the app or kill the app completely if you don’t plan to use it for the time being. Try also to update your app the its latest version, because the previous version way of work, may not be fully suitable or aligned with the new iOS.
7. Your iPhone battery is anyway not 100% of its stamina like when you bought it brand new
One last thing that people tend to forget is that, if you are not using the iOS 11 native devices (read: iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X), chances are your iPhone and other iOS devices is at least few months old or few years old. The battery inside each of iOS devices has its own stamina. You must know and have to accept the fact that, if your iPhone and iOS devices are few years old, the battery won’t be that good like when you bought them brand new.
Other things you can do to save battery life
1. Restart your iPhone.
Seriously, sometimes all you need to do is just to restart your iPhone. Do it especially after upgrading from previous version of iOS, there might be some process from old iOS are still running and need restart to completely shut them down.
Do check here to see how you can easily restart your iPhone on iOS 11.
2. Consider turning off background app refresh
Although you are not actively using the app, but since the app is in your app switcher (iOS Multitasking), some of them are still running on background. Think like Uber. Although you are not using it actively, but Uber keep requesting your location via background app refresh.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Turn it off.
3. Consider using low power mode.
It won’t do much harm to you. You just won’t get automatic mail fetching, no Hey Siri, no background app refresh, no automatic downloads, and some other visual effects are turned off.
Do check here to see how you can easily turn on low power mode on iOS 11.
4. Keep checking iOS updates for possible future updates
Go to Settings > General > Software Update. Install if you can find newer version there. Newer version should come with patches and bug fixes (apart from bringing in new bugs to the iOS :p ).
5. Consider replacing your battery
Last but not least, do consider replacing your battery if you still intend to use your iPhone or iOS devices for another couple of years ahead.
Bring it all together
Hearing all these negative news about iOS 11 battery draining, for those who are still on iOS 10 or before, so should you upgrade? for those who are using iOS 11 already, should you downgrade?
For me, I embrace new technologies. So while Apple try to fix the issues, I’ll use the above workaround and try to live with it.
Anyway most of the time I’ll be sitting next to a computer during working hour where I can charge my device anytime. And I always bring Powerbank with me, so battery draining on iOS 11 while it sucks, I can still live with it.
What about you? Have you tried all the above methods and find your iOS 11 devices now works much better? Do give your comments and thoughts on the comment section below. Cheers!
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